darth_librarian
Regular
Another shitty studio Money < Common sense decision....
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=0&id=38958
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=0&id=38958
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Peter Jackson dropped from the Hobbit...
- Thread starter darth_librarian
- Start date
crazyhorse
Anarchist
Did Jackson not state that he wasn't going to do The Hobbit just after LOTR?
Never heard of a prequel either.I reckon they are just after a bit of cheap publicity.
Never heard of a prequel either.I reckon they are just after a bit of cheap publicity.
vacantlook
Super Moderator
While New Line currently has the rights to produce The Hobbit, MGM holds the rights to distribute it, and going off of what's in this article from Variety, MGM isn't all that happy with this news about New Line.
From the rest of the article, it seems that New Line is quickly approaching the expiration of its rights to produce The Hobbit, and since Jackson's lawsuit with New Line isn't going to be resolved before their rights to produce expire, they're booting Jackson from the film.
From the rest of the article, it seems that New Line is quickly approaching the expiration of its rights to produce The Hobbit, and since Jackson's lawsuit with New Line isn't going to be resolved before their rights to produce expire, they're booting Jackson from the film.
Chilli
High Treason Prevention Officer
I don't think making movies of LOTR was a particularily easy task.
That doesn't change the fact though that the trilogy is just horribly BORING. Other work of Jackson's that I've seen bits and pieces of hasn't seemed any more thrilling.
But, from a business standpoint, it does sound like a poor choice. They DID make loads of money on LOTR ...
That doesn't change the fact though that the trilogy is just horribly BORING. Other work of Jackson's that I've seen bits and pieces of hasn't seemed any more thrilling.
But, from a business standpoint, it does sound like a poor choice. They DID make loads of money on LOTR ...
Recoil
Regular
Boring eh? Have you ever READ those books? They are dreadfully boring! Lots of stuff going on in between with a few battles here and there. The battle of Helms Deep was like 3 pages in the books, and was the entire END of the second movie. He acutally did a lot to make them less boring for the big screen. I think he did a great job. They certainly weren't non-stop action, especially the Extended editions, but he took the very very very long epic and made it into something watchable.
Dont get me wrong, the books are great, but they are dull in lots of places and very long. Thats not what their appeal was though...
Dont get me wrong, the books are great, but they are dull in lots of places and very long. Thats not what their appeal was though...
Chilli
High Treason Prevention Officer
Exactly. It's the battle scenes, and the completely pointless length of them, which made the movie so painful for me. I'm just not a fan of grand battles if there's nothing fun about them.
And an hour for something that was on three pages is .. diluted. At least it felt like that for me.
And I've read the books .. to some degree. I quit in the middle of the Two Towers, for reasons not connected to the book. I had some super-LOTR-geek classmates at the time, that asked me every single bloody day .. "so, how much did you read? WHAT?? SO LITTLE???" .. EVERY. FUCKING. DAY.
It bugged me so much, it took all the fun out of reading the books - telling them to fuck off by quitting them was more fun than the books were at that point
.. planned to continue reading them at some point in the future, but have yet to get to that.
GKarsEye
Regular
Ooh, are we gonna devolve into another LOTR argument- books/movies, books vs movies, etc?
Look, the books aren't written as 3 logical, streamlined, well-paced novels. It's just a set of fairy tales. Beautifully written, imaginative fairy tales that ultimately mean nothing and, if done "faithfully," would make one hell of a boring trilogy of movies. Because, you know, Tom freakin-Bombadil would've made an AWESOME piece of cinema.
A hobbit movie is pointless. Leave the franchise alone, let's not Lucas this shit to death.
Speaking of looking like hobbits, I encountered the funniest little drunk at this bar I was at: he and another loser friend were hanging out with these two mediocre chicks and he was just stumbling around vaguely annoying people and being jealous of the blonde everytime she danced with her friend with the gnarly teeth or asked me to buy her a drink. I almost threw a dart in his face by accident (heh) and he and his friend eventually got kicked out (the friend had his pants down for some reason at the time). After I started referring to that chubby, awkwardly-bearded inebbriated near-dwarf as "Bilbo Baggins," the company I was with just lost it, and then he tried to beat me up but hit the jukebox instead because he probably couldn't see straight and at least that was his height.
Heh-heh... silly hobbits
Look, the books aren't written as 3 logical, streamlined, well-paced novels. It's just a set of fairy tales. Beautifully written, imaginative fairy tales that ultimately mean nothing and, if done "faithfully," would make one hell of a boring trilogy of movies. Because, you know, Tom freakin-Bombadil would've made an AWESOME piece of cinema.
A hobbit movie is pointless. Leave the franchise alone, let's not Lucas this shit to death.
Speaking of looking like hobbits, I encountered the funniest little drunk at this bar I was at: he and another loser friend were hanging out with these two mediocre chicks and he was just stumbling around vaguely annoying people and being jealous of the blonde everytime she danced with her friend with the gnarly teeth or asked me to buy her a drink. I almost threw a dart in his face by accident (heh) and he and his friend eventually got kicked out (the friend had his pants down for some reason at the time). After I started referring to that chubby, awkwardly-bearded inebbriated near-dwarf as "Bilbo Baggins," the company I was with just lost it, and then he tried to beat me up but hit the jukebox instead because he probably couldn't see straight and at least that was his height.
Heh-heh... silly hobbits
Alluveal
Regular
That's Tolkien. He gives us 8 pages of how dark and deep the charms of Khazad'Dum are, then 3 sentences dedicated to Gandalf's face off. Haha.
I have huge reservations now, truth be told. If New Line had the sense God gave a mule, they would make this crap WORK and get Jackson on board. If not for him, LOTR could have been a disaster.
I have huge reservations now, truth be told. If New Line had the sense God gave a mule, they would make this crap WORK and get Jackson on board. If not for him, LOTR could have been a disaster.
KoshFan
Regular
I'm ambivalent.
I love the books, and I think the movies got progressively worse. (Of course, the part of the last one that I liked the best was the much-maligned ending with its three dozen blackouts.) So on the whole, I feel Jackson went for spectacle at the expense of sense or story time and again, and I think he would not be an ideal choice to direct The Hobbit, which is all about character development.
From prior posts on this board, others would clearly disagree.
Of course, if they get someone even worse (the director of Top Gun is apparently in the running) then yes, this is a bad call. Also, the rumor is that Ian McKellen might not take this news well, and refuse to reprise as Gandalf, which would be a true tragedy. He was perfect as Gandalf in the first movie, and he'd probably be even better in The Hobbit.
Chilli, I used to be one of those annoying geeks who continually pestered my buddies. Fortunately, my buddies were also geeks, just slower readers. The hardest lesson for any enthusiast to learn is where the line is between infectious enthusiasm and repellent fanatacism.
I love the books, and I think the movies got progressively worse. (Of course, the part of the last one that I liked the best was the much-maligned ending with its three dozen blackouts.) So on the whole, I feel Jackson went for spectacle at the expense of sense or story time and again, and I think he would not be an ideal choice to direct The Hobbit, which is all about character development.
From prior posts on this board, others would clearly disagree.
Of course, if they get someone even worse (the director of Top Gun is apparently in the running) then yes, this is a bad call. Also, the rumor is that Ian McKellen might not take this news well, and refuse to reprise as Gandalf, which would be a true tragedy. He was perfect as Gandalf in the first movie, and he'd probably be even better in The Hobbit.
Chilli, I used to be one of those annoying geeks who continually pestered my buddies. Fortunately, my buddies were also geeks, just slower readers. The hardest lesson for any enthusiast to learn is where the line is between infectious enthusiasm and repellent fanatacism.
darth_librarian
Regular
The books are written in a particular style, that of a chronicle, which does not translate well to some modern audiences for either literature, and it structually not suited to cinmea at all. it was never meant to be either.
Jackson took the content, what he considered to be the key thematic and plot elements, fleshed out some of the characters and did in my opinion avery good job.
i'd still hate to see anyone else working on that IP in film form in any way though.
I think the 'prequel' would fill in some of the gaps between the Hobbit and LOTR, stuff that is explained at the White Council meeting and in the appendicies...
Jackson took the content, what he considered to be the key thematic and plot elements, fleshed out some of the characters and did in my opinion avery good job.
i'd still hate to see anyone else working on that IP in film form in any way though.
I think the 'prequel' would fill in some of the gaps between the Hobbit and LOTR, stuff that is explained at the White Council meeting and in the appendicies...
KoshFan
Regular
Oh, there's no doubt in my mind that Jackson did a very good job. But to my mind he lost a lot of credibility when he a) destroyed the character of Denethor and b) had Gollum succeed in driving a wedge between Sam and Frodo. He messed up some great characters just to increase the tension, when there was really no need at all.
Other than those two cardinal sins, his other transgressions were fairly forgiveable. I think he missed a trick or two -- the battle in front of Minas Tirith could have been done beautifully in the dark, as it was supposed to be -- but by and large he did very well. Except with Denethor and Frodo.
Other than those two cardinal sins, his other transgressions were fairly forgiveable. I think he missed a trick or two -- the battle in front of Minas Tirith could have been done beautifully in the dark, as it was supposed to be -- but by and large he did very well. Except with Denethor and Frodo.
PillowRock
Regular
Well, on the "felt that way to me" bit: Fair enough.
However, at the risk of sounding extremely obvious, the written word and showing things on film are very different mediums. Some things that a writer spends *pages* on, you know will always end up as only a few seconds on film. Other things that take up very little space on the page just always will take quite a bit more time to actually see play out.
Helm's Deep falls into this latter category. No matter who directed it on film, that few pages *was* going to take up <u>much</u> more time than its relative number of words / pages would indicate. You can describe a growing sense of dread or doom at seeing a huge army advance toward you in a sentence or two. However, to *show* it, you have to take a fair percentage of the amount of time that it would actually take an army to march across that open plain. You can say in writing that the defenders were slowly, but inexoribly pushed back until they held only the keep in one or two sentences (in fact, you kinda *have* to when writing it, otherwise it gets repetitive). However, to match that description on film, it has to actually *be* done slowly; otherwise it feels like a quick route rather than the stubbornly contested fight to the death that the author described.
